Well that whole blogging every few days while moving thing didn’t happen!  Oh man it has been a chaotic couple of weeks, wow!  Got completely moved out of the apartment on Friday afternoon, keys turned in, energy so drained from days of non-stop heavy lifting, cleaning, etc that I could barely manage to write up my Threadbanger roundup and get it posted by like 7pm then watch stupid shows on hulu (like Flash Forward, so bad but I watch it still) for hours and let my brain and muscles heal a wee bit…

Then yesterday I finally had a whole day in the house (except for a walk to my local Food-4-Less to stock the fridge with some necessities, like new house cake and frozen pizza, already missing being able to walk to TJ’s), so I shot all these photos and planned to write this blog post right away.  But, after taking the pictures of all the box madness, I felt the need to make the living space more livable, so I moved boxes into their rooms and moved furniture around, and now at least we can function in our main living space, even with most of our possessions still boxed up.

So, finally I’m back to blogging today, starting with this introduction to our new house post!  I’ll be dividing photo-of-the-day posts up into a couple of sets, instead of doing a massive 3 weeks of photos post all at once… so those will give you a glimpse into the last few weeks of fun and work and moving craziness…  Now the tour begins!  Above is the view from the front door, living room (pre-box-moving, duh) and dining area back there where the fan is.  Notice not just a ceiling fan for most summer days, but an air conditioner for those few superhot 100+ Portland days each year, yay!

One of the first things we did was hang that little framed welcome to our home cross stitch, thrifted awhile back… Now that we have the space, we’ll eventually get the rest of the L pieces for our couch so it wraps across the window – great light through those big picture windows!  And Garbanzo’s cat tree is the perfect height to sit with us and look outside.

Our view from the front windows.  (Here’s the outside view, taken before the house was ours, but I don’t think anything has changed.)

Our orange wall!  The house closed a few days early, allowing us the extra time to paint a wall before moving day, hooray!  It used to be the same blue as the other living area walls you can see in the top two photos – so much country blue!  I don’t mind the blue as much now that the orange gives some contrast, but we do plan to eventually cover all the blue with our own shades (thinking of making one wall green and the other a yellow/orange, perhaps).

The kitchen is a bit smaller than our apartment kitchen was, but we’ll be able to make it work just fine – so happy (relieved) that there’s a dishwasher, and the gas stove and the fridge are both super nice!  That window looks into the back room, which is a converted covered patio…

…and that big carpeted main section will be transformed into 1k Labs!  They put in a nice, new sliding glass door for us, which looks out onto the huge back yard:

Yes, we desperately need to buy a lawn mower, and learn how to do yard work, then learn how to plant things that we can eat!  (Planning to start with tomatoes and carrots!)  Exciting and overwhelming!  That shed is pretty awesome – easily fits my bike, plus another bike if/when Pete gets one, and all our yard stuff once we get it.  (No garage, but we don’t really need one.)  Oh, and that tree in the back there is gigantic, and has a squirrel feeder!

On the other side of the back room is the laundry room – with our brand new, super awesome washer and dryer! Woo yay!! (Mostly yay for no more apartment complex laundry stupidness or laundromats, but also yay for finding an affordable deal on a nice front loader!)  Yeah, we’re feeling like such adults lately, being excited about buying a washer/dryer and stuff, but not feeling like we actually are adults, really, weird, hah…

And that is my studio!  I was originally going to get the master bedroom, but those extra days before moving day allowed me to see the rooms in different times of the day and levels of overcastyness, and I discovered that the smaller bedroom gets amazing light!!  That skinny little window, facing west with no overhang or trees in the way, is magical!  So, I opted for the space sacrifice (this studio will be smaller than my apartment studio was, bummer) and went for the happyhappy sunlight – there are even green walls to make it happier!  Since there is a ridiculous amount of storage space in this house (3 big closets just in the hallway alone, plus a huge attic!) I think I’ll be ok, just have to get more creative with all my supplies.

And then the ultra-tiny 3rd bedroom is going to become the library!  We love calling it that, though it’ll function more like a storage room, but we’re going to try to make it look awesome, lined with bookshelves all around!  No more stacks of books piling up around the living room because they have no space to go!

And lastly, the bedroom, which inspired my roundup – not sure what solution I want to try for a headboard…  I really liked our makeshift shelved headboard (made with Ikea shelves and fabric panels) but I don’t think it would work here because of those wall-mounted lights, which I like having (though I want to make new shades).  It’s weird having a huge bedroom, after years of our bed and clothes crammed into a space barely bigger than the bed itself, so that my studio could live in the real bedroom room.

I made a flickr set of house photos, which has some more, and most of them have notes about details… Once everything is unpacked, set up, decorated, looking good, I’ll take new photos, but that could be months away!

Oh and as for the whole questions thing…  I answered a few smaller questions in the comments, but I will still be doing the answer posts, and feel free to continue adding to the list if you think of anything you want to ask!  The answers will just be spread out now, since I wasn’t able to do it during the move.

Turns out packing is a ton of work!  Hah, every time I move I forget how long it takes… so I don’t have any time to do any real blog posts for this week and next, sorry!  My brother is coming up from LA tomorrow (yay!) to go to Bridgetown Comedy Festival this weekend, which we are also going to (yay again!) and then official moving day is Wednesday, a week from tomorrow!

So, I did this silly threes thing (below) that Kimya Dawson had on her blog, just to put something up here… I hate having an empty blog for too long, soooo, I’m going to copy something Cosy did awhile ago:

Ask me questions! Big or small, about anything, here in the comments.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to find bits of time between all the excitement in the next couple weeks to do blog posts every few days answering them!  Big questions that will require photos or more time will be saved for later, so ask anything you want me to talk about… Hopefully I’ll get a few fun posts out of it!

Three names I go by:
1. Lee
2. leethal
3. Lee Anne (but only my grandparents)

Three jobs I have had:
1. college radio operations manager, and DJ
2. counterperson at local pizza place, in high school
3. college theater stage crew

Three places I have lived:
1. San Diego (Hillcrest neighborhood)
2. Long Beach, CA
3. England, University of Sussex campus

Three favorite drinks:
1. coffee with soy milk
2. beer
3. orange juice with pulp

Three TV shows I watch:
1. 30 Rock
2. Parks & Recreation
3. Glee

Three places I have been:
1. Scotland
2. New York
3. Wisconsin

Three places I would like to visit:
1. Chicago
2. Canada
3. Ireland

Three favorite old TV shows:
1. My So-Called Life
2. Mary Tyler Moore
3. Buffy

Three favorite dishes:
1. The Loaded Bowl at Jam, with tofu and black beans added
2. Mac and Cheese at Hedge House
3. Drunken Noodles with tofu

Three makeup/beauty products I cannot live without:
1. face scrub
2. wee bit of moisturizer
3. baking soda (for hair)

Three things I’m looking forward to:
1. after we’re all moved in to the house!
2. Summit of Awesome
3. Bridgetown Comedy Festival

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my business, with some things coinciding and pushing me to get more organized and really figure out what I should be focusing on.  Doing creative things for a living is damn hard sometimes, and I’ve felt a little lost for the last few days.

I want to just do what I love, design things I’m passionate about, blog tons of free tutorials and other fun stuff, and not worry about money at all, but alas… rent does need to be paid, we are searching for a house, and though I’m in no financial state to even think about contributing to the down payment, my monthly half will likely go above what it is for this supercheap apartment where we currently live.

I have absolutely no plans to change what I do, change this blog or my website in any drastic kind of way, and I will continue to design and make things I’m into, even though I know they’re not the kinds of things that will appeal to the bulk of mainstream knitters or buyers… sigh, that’s just how I roll.

But, I am trying to figure out just what I should be putting at the top of my priority list, that kind of thing.  I’m currently working on 4 different concrete knit designs (1 free, by the way), plus several more ideas floating around in my head, and I have big plans for a freaking awesome ebook, which I want to get started on as soon as possible!  And then there’s the connect-the-dots stitch sets, which I absolutely love designing, but are not exactly booming with sales, so, sadly, it’s not practical for me to devote tons of time there.  I know if I did some kind of big makeover to the packaging/branding/etc, they might attract a wider audience, but hey, I like using recycled envelopes, and I like them having a handmade feel, because, you know, they are handmade!

That’s the problem for so many of us creative professionals… the conflict of staying true to who we are, continuing to do what we love and love what we’re doing, with that damn need to pay the bills messing it all up.  I learned all about business planning, and also about google docs, the other night at Trillium, from super awesome superPhoebe, which is part of where all this business analysis came from…

So, I’ve created a survey with google docs to try to help me get a better grasp of who you are, my dear readers, what you like, what you want, and how I might want to steer what I do in that direction.  It’s a short survey, and it’s totally anonymous and every question is optional – I really so much appreciate any feedback you can give!  ThankYouThankYouThankYou!

Now another thing… some topics discussed at that same meeting, and also reading Ysolda’s latest post, about sharing design process, got me thinking… if I’m designing something to self-publish, there’s no reason to keep it a secret, so why not show you a first version prototype of a design that I’m working on?  So this is one of the designs I’m currently knitting up – while knitting this one pictured, I changed some design details as I knit, since it was just to test out the shape, and then I frogged it.  I’m working up another similarly sized one now, and I’m planning on making it an any-gauge pattern, so I’ve spun up a skein of self-striping specifically to make it into another one of these bad boys!

It’s kinda bonkers, but I love it!  It’s super transformable – can be worn a bunch of different ways – and by adding more buttons it could be even more so!  I had been thinking about trying to release it next week, like in a few days, but it would probably be Fridayish at the soonest, and now I’m wondering whether I should move my to-do list around and put this design off till later.  So, part of the reason I’m showing you here it to ask, whaddya think?  Do you want the pattern asap, while there’s still a little winter weather left?

Oh goodness, I have not been able to keep up with everything while Pete’s on vacation!  I’ve been working on deadline-y projects whenever I can squeeze it in, and I’ve spent the last many days (week? I don’t even know) working on this project I’m about to announce, bit by bit, but I’ve been completely detached from things like twitter and blog world… and I am weeks behind now on posting photos-a-day, though I’ve still been taking them, so you can expect 3 weeks worth of photos this weekend!

Ok so, the one thing I have finished – the first 4 months of leethal quick knits club patterns are now available in a mini-ebook!  Each month’s pattern pair can be purchased alone, but it’s a much better deal to get the whole set – 8 patterns, plus extras (like the pencil cover), in a 20 page pdf for $5.99, versus 2 patterns from an individual month for $2.99.  But that way, if you really just want one pattern, you can get it for half the price of the whole set.

The ebook is all up on ravelry too, and all the patterns are now on my quick knits patterns page, where you’ll find more photos of each pattern.

Not much else to say about this, since the patterns have all already been released to club members and blogged about…

A couple fun quick things… I’ve been spending some time in Pete’s studio playing around with making music!  So much fun!  Us and a couple musical buddies (Star and Grant! Yay!) have created a couple of songs (I’m the only non-musician, so I’m either on super-simple drums or xylophone) and then Pete and I made a song by ourselves yesterday.  Nothing to put out to the public (yet?) but I just wanted to tell you because it’s been such a fun time – yay music!

Lastly, I have another pattern I’m super excited about that I had been hoping to release this week, but it’s getting bumped to next week because of life… but hey, since I’m just self-publishing it, it doesn’t have to be super secret!  Here’s a peek for you!

Exactly 5 years ago today, I met up with an old college radio acquaintance at a coffee shop in Costa Mesa for a non-date that ended up lasting 6 hours.  And the rest is history!

These are some oooold old old shots of us, mostly from our first few months together in 2005.  February is a fun month for me, with our anniversary on the 9th, my birthday on the 11th, and then silly Valentine’s Day, which we mostly ignore, but it’s fun to have 3 days right there in a row.  This year is extra fun because Pete took a 2 week vacation from his day job, to work in his studio and hang out with me, so I’m taking some vacationy time also.  Yay!

So I just wanted to show you this cute little mini anniversary card I made with some reclaimed pretty patterned cardstock from Scrap…

This print company gave a bunch of great looking cards and things to Scrap when they closed down their shop, so I picked up stacks of these tags for a dollar an inch, sweet!  They are about the size of standard bookmarks, with a score in the middle to fold into tags:

So I took one of each color/pattern, freehand cut two into hearts, used one as the card base, and turned them into a little card, which would be perfect as a Valentine, if you happen to have some pretty patterned paper/cardstock around in your stash!

Oh and I did a roundup of heart projects on Threadbanger last week, so if you’re looking to do some V-day crafting, you might want to check that out!

I love you, Pete!

Hey locals! My guy Pete, who has been hosting trivia nights every few weeks for the last year and a half-ish at Zach’s Shack, has gotten a gig doing his own exciting new trivia night regularly at the Radio Room on NE Alberta!! Every 2nd and last Tuesday night, starting next Tuesday, with that awesome name – Wet Hot American Trivia! – and some seriously fabulous prizes, it will be superfun for all!

Prizes, I say?  Oh yeah!  Ranging from $10-$30 in restaurant/bar credit (check out their delicious-looking menu!), to all kinds of amazing things we just bought today at Goodwill and Dollar Tree, knowledge knowers will surely be rewarded!  If you’ve been to any of his Zach’s nights, you know he always has a signature audio round (usually music, sometimes movie clips), but WHAT will be taking it up a notch with video rounds!!  I don’t even know what to expect, but I know I’m excited (everything is kept super-secret from me, so I can play)!

Follow WHAT news on facebook here and on myspace here.

And since I’m sharing Portland event news for locals, I think now is a good time to tell you I’ll be selling leethal stuffs this year at the Crafty Wonderland Super Colossal Holiday Sale (Dec 13th)!!  It’ll be my first time there, at the huge convention center event, so I’m all kinds of stressed and nervous and super excited about it!! Yay!

And, as I’ve done the last 2 years, I’ll also be at the Scrap Holiday Bazaar (Dec 19th)!  Always a fun one, a fantastic store, great people, hope you can all make it!!

Find me?!

How about there? Here’s a harder one…

What a fun costume!! The only problem with it was that I felt bad for the other members of my group, since I got all the silly comments and stuff! Such as “I found you!” and the more clever “Hey I’ve been looking for you all night!” and the weird “Waldo” said kind of like an insult while walking by. It was great when our friends Kate and Kit were meeting us at Beulahland and they had to search through the crowd to find Waldo!

I did put a few hours of valuable knitting time into making the hat, and Pete and I spent a huge chunk of our day off at the freakin’ mall trying to find a red+white striped shirt, which was totally worth it to be Waldo, but it would have been a boring costume without my buddies as the Waldo world townspeople!

Pete found a grey+black striped sweater and wore my Mary Tyler Moore striped+pompommed hat and his piano scarf to be a stripey Waldo nemesis type guy; Star wore red+white striped socks and gloves, a red+white polka dotted shirt, and a white hat to throw off the viewer; and Caitlin+Patrick provided more hats and stripes in the scene.

And then Kit joined in as Woody the cowboy to add to the picture! And awesome Kate (who was Amelia Earhart) took the photos!! Yay, thanks Kate!

So there’s me as Waldo – simple costume, but not easy to find a shirt like that!! Ended up with a hoodie (folded the hood under) from this weird store called GenX on 82nd. Knit the hat from recycled cotton (improvised design – 2×2 ribbed brim, then stockinette, works well as a slouchy hat with brim unfolded), and the glasses are “nerd glasses” from the Halloween section at Value Village, with the lenses popped out.  (Downside of the costume – couldn’t see too well all night without my real glasses!)  Plus Pete’s cane from when he hurt his knee, a backpack to complete the look, and I tried to keep my bangs swished to the side all night to look like his!

Our night might have been a little silly (our Halloweens usually end up that way) but I’d say the group costume was a total success!  Yay!

Oh hey, did you know that Waldo is a spinner?!

So that was our Halloween group night, but now I need to move backwards to Halloween afternoon at Twisted! Fun times!

I came to the event just as they were finishing the web, sadly, armed with my unneeded wheel and alpaca.  The web was rad though!

And I got to help hang it up in the corner, so at least I was able to contribute something to the project!  Then I spun a bunch of dirty alpaca, straight from the fleece, just for fun!

I got to meet Jimbo and Inga and Jimbo’s giant crochet hook!  Carved from a solid log of wood, it’s heavy and smooth and rad!!

And then, for some crazy but awesome reason, Jimbo decided to give me one of his hand carved nostepinnes that he’d brought for prizes!  So beautiful!!  (More photos in my flickr – it’s so photogenic!!)

When I got home, I wanted to try it out right away, of course!  So I found a nostepinne how-to on a blog (Fiber Fool), which I glanced over quickly then proceeded to not really follow the steps when I stepped away from the computer to try it out.  It was fun, but a bit of advice: when trying a new fiber winding technique for the first time, don’t use a freshly spun fuzzy alpaca single!

I stopped at this point and wound it into a hank, with much tangling, but no breaking!  Anyway, here’s my alpaca skein (174 yards) before washing – it’s pretty much bright white fiber, with the off-whiteness being the dust.  Spinning straight from the dirty fleece is fun!!  (With alpaca, not wool, because alpaca doesn’t have the greasy/waxy lanolin that wool has.)  It’s soaking in its 3rd soapy water bowl now, with lots of rinsing between soaks, so it’ll be nice and clean by the time I’m done, don’t worry!

So yeah, fun Halloween!!  Thanks Twisted for your awesomeness!!

I’m hard at work on this ebook (another little peek for you above, mmmmm cables!), hoping to be able to release it this week!  So I just want to take a quick break to show+tell you some stuff…

I’ll start out with a couple of Portland things – first, tomorrow (Sunday) is the Craft Writers Talking event at the Hollywood library!  We have a fantastic library system in this town, and they are bringing us yet another awesome free event, which should be a very useful talk to those of us who are interested in making craft books!  The talk is with Portland craft writers/bloggers/crafty superstars Susan Beal, Diane Gilleland, and Alicia Paulson (books pictured above), and they’ll be talking about “books, blogs, craftiness and everything in between” (according to Susan).  Yet another event that makes me feel incredibly lucky to be living here in PDX!

And then also in Portland news, I’m so excited to be participating in a project to help support Knittn’ Kitten (which I recently wrote about)!  A bunch of us Portland crafters will be designing projects which use materials found at the Kitten, and giving them out for free at the shop, with a new project being released each week.  Here’s the list of participants (so far):

• September 22 – Heather Mann (of Croq, Dollar Store Crafts, Craft Fail)
• September 29 – Teresa Sullivan
• October 6 – Diane Gilleland
• October 13 – Joey Groendes
• October 20 – Christine Blystone
• October 27 – Susan Beal
• November 3 – Me!
• November 10 – Bridget Benton

You can pick up the project sheets each week at the shop (ask for the pattern at the register), grab the materials you need while you’re there, and each of us will post about the project of the week on our blogs (and/or twitter, etc).  And there’s a flickr group!  Not just for these projects, but for anything Kitten-related, so post your rad vintage finds and projects!  You can see a peek of the project Susan’s planning on her blog, and I’ve seen a couple of glimpses at other planned projects – I think it’s so cool that every project will use different techniques (like sewing, beading, knitting, crochet, embroidery, etc) since the Kitten has some of everything!

As for some personal updating… Pete’s studio is up and running!  The site isn’t done yet, and his space isn’t finished, but he worked on his first job a few days ago and it went well!!  As for my new expanded studio space, tons of work to do and no free time to do it, so I’ve been fitting in little spurts of work here and there, slowly getting things in order.  Can’t wait till it’s done and I can show you a tour!

And lastly, check it out, I DIYed a haircut for the first time ever!  I don’t have a before picture, but you can sort of see in some of those hat pictures from a little while ago – my bangs had been at that super annoying length where they’re in my face all the time, but not quite long enough to tuck behind my ears, so I would always wear a clip or a headband.  I had plans to cut off all my hair again, but kept putting it off for various reasons, until I decided I wanted to try bangs with longer hair, at least just to see if I like it, then chop it all off soon if I want to.  So I tried doing it myself!  Figured, I’ve got nothing to loose; if I screw it up, I’ll just go have it fixed, chop it all off like I planned to anyway.  I think I did ok!  Especially for a first time…

So then I finished my hair makeover with some dye yesterday, which did not turn out how I’d meant, but eh, it’s different (for me), which is cool.  I picked a color called burgundy, which was the color I wanted, imagining it to look something like this (more reddish, like a dark purpley shade of red) on my hair.  And this is what I got (black in the shade, super dark purple in the light):

If/when I get sick of it, maybe I’ll go pink again!  For now, I think I’m happy with the look!

Last weekend we hit 2 years living in Portland (Portlandiversary, as Caitlin called it!) – and it’s been a fabulous 2 years!  So I made a mix to celebrate!

I hadn’t made an official mix, complete with title and artwork, since my moving to Portland mix, so I was excited to put some effort into this one!  It doesn’t tell a story like that one did; it’s just music I’ve gotten into since moving here.  I always associate music with a place or a time in my life, and  I have been pretty out of touch with new music since college, so most of the music I listen to these days was music I was into way back then.  So most of my music makes me think of San Diego, my college radio DJing days, 2/3/4 shows a week days… There’s not a whole lot of stuff I’ve newly gotten into since living up here, so this mix is just that – bands/artists/songs I associate only with Portland!

i am grounded i am humbled i am one with everything

Come By Storm                                [Laura Gibson]
Bag of Hammers                                [Thao]
Raincoat Song                               [The Decemberists]
I Like Giants                                    [Kimya Dawson]
Between The Bars                                [Amelia]
I Thought I Saw Your Face Today                    [She & Him]
Falling Slowly                                [Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová]
Fallen Snow                                   [Au Revoir Simone]
Heartbroken Forever                            [Tender Forever]
Hungry Liars (Featuring Justin Power)                   [Portland Cello Project]
Up North                                    [Alela Diane]
Skinny Love                                    [Bon Iver]
Heartbeats                                    [José González]
Journey Of The Featherless                        [Cloud Cult]
The Hazards of Love IV (The Drowned)                   [The Decemberists]
You’re The One For Me                           [Pete]

Want me to go into detail?  Ok not tooo much detail, just a little…..

Laura Gibson is my most Portland-associated artist – she’s from here, I first heard her on the PDX Pop Now! mix I bought at Q is for Choir when we first moved here (the song on my mix), we saw her live at an awesome Portland venue (The Old Church) with our awesome Portland friends (Caitlin and Patrick), and the song is even rain-related!

I was aware of Kimya Dawson pre-Portland, but mostly only through the Moldy Peaches; didn’t get into her solo stuff till Portland.  I saw her live here (with Tender Forever) at a super Portland-tastic show (at the Village Free School), and her song on the mix is where the title came from.

There are 2 songs by The Decemberists not because I love them that much, but because of how I got into them, or something… I didn’t like them much, but I tried, living here and having friends who were crazy about them, so I checked out a couple different albums, not caring much for any of them – except for the Raincoat Song, I loved that song!  Plus, again, it’s rain-related, so yeah, it had to go on the mix.  Anyway, that was pre-Hazards of Love.  When that album came out I decided to give them another chance, and I ended up totally falling in love with it!  So, to me, The Decemberists pre-Hazards is like a different band than Hazards of Love Decemberists, hence the song from Hazards and the Raincoat song both making the mix.

I didn’t really want the song from Once on there because it’s so overplayed, or at least it was for awhile back there, but it had to be because Once is one of the first movies we ever saw in Portland (at the Hollywood) and the soundtrack was one of the first CDs I bought in Portland (at Music Millennium) so it’s super Portlandy in my head.  And I used to love it a bunch, before I got sick of it… but it’s still a nice song.

And then the rest are just assorted artists and bands I heard for the first time here and/or got really into up here, some being from Portland/Pacific Northwest… and then the last one is a song Pete made for me here in Portland, with lyrics about our lives together here.  (examples: “We’ve got so much, it’s kind of rad, like a Banzo kitten, extra bad” and “We need one of our ideas to make it big and blow a mind or two, so we can sell out like Andrew Dickson and I can work from home just like you; and every day we’ll take a walk and work on songs and spin some yarn, and we’ll prove Notorious BIG wrong when they say more money means more darn, problems”)

Oh yeah, and the photo on the cover was taken around the end of the snowpocalypse last December through our front window.  It doesn’t have any special meaning or relation to the songs, I just like how it looks, and it’s from our Portland home.

So, enough about that.  The mix write-up is kind of instead of going through things that have happened in the last 2 years, because that would be way too much to go through.  One exciting new thing, though – Pete’s mastering studio is just about up and running!  The website is still pretty placeholder-y but the basic info is there (we’re still working on a real logo, and since the studio is still being remodeled, photos of the space don’t exist yet).  So, I’m really excited that Pete is pursuing his dream career, since I’ve been pursuing mine for a couple years now!  With some hard work and some luck, a few years from now we’ll both be doing only things we love!!

One last, unrelated thing: don’t forget that tomorrow (Tues) is the last day to sign up for the Sept quick knits club!  There is one change since last month – you know how the extra versions of the pattern in the August club were a bonus, since there was only supposed to be one pattern?  Yeah well, I decided to change that so that there will always be patterns for both yarns instead of just one!  Yay!

ok this post is way belated – this is the first part of our fun times with pete’s parents playing tourists, before the berry picking and stuff from my post a couple weeks ago.  i’ve had the photos plugged into a draft for weeks, and now so much time has passed, i’m just going to show you the photos with brief captions…

those above 3 are inside the timberline lodge, on mount hood, where there was lots of cool crafted stuff, like hooked rugs made with recycled uniforms, and that crazy old loom.

we ate some super yum food, and got to sit on the other side of that window you can see above, with that view of mount jefferson, so majestic!

pete got tillamook mac n cheese and i got some awesome pasta salad – timberline lodge, thumbs up!

coming home from mount hood, we took a scenic route through hood river to the 84, which we ended up regretting due to a hay truck on fire ahead, stopping the freeway completely for 3 hours (for us – others had been stopped for several hours longer) once we hit the jam.  lucky for us though, the point where we stopped happened to be at a shoulder along the columbia river gorge where we were able to pull over and walk around.  so i took a lot of photos…

i think that’s the closest i’ve ever been to a (moving) train.  i had fun with shutter speed experiments.

cameras are fun!

then the next day we drove out to the coast, stopping on the way at mcmenamin’s grand lodge (not super interesting when we’re used to kennedy school, edgefield, bagdad, etc).

and stopping along the side of the road in various naturey spots to take a few photos…

…before arriving at the tillamook cheese factory!

it was a fun time! cooler than i would have thought to see the cheese being made, in various stages, and interesting to learn about tillamook and their happy cows!  and we got some free cheese samples, and ice cream!

then we headed up to seaside…

this was my first time seeing the oregon coast, after living in portland for 2 years.  as i’d been told, it’s way different from the southern california beaches i’m used to.  cold but very scenic and photogenic!

i took some hooded family shots…

and more…

then up to astoria for dinner at fort george (yummm anaheim pepper veggie burger!) and to see the column and the view:

we didn’t go up the column (too high!), but i did take a picture looking up the stairs:

and here’s the view looking the other way… oh oregon, so green…

good day trips! fun times!  i like playing tourist without traveling far – well, i love traveling far, but since that’s not possible, day trips are a fun alternative.

to keep you updated, it’s looking like the new site won’t be up till monday night or tuesday – the next do stuff! post should be the site announcement!  then i’ll catch up on yarn… i’ve been successful in keeping up with tour de fleece, although i’m probably going to take tomorrow off, then spin on monday which is supposed to be a day of rest, because of my schedule.  yay yarn!

pete’s parents came up for a full 2 week vacation, and pete was able to get a total of 6 days off work to hang with them; i managed to take most of that time off too (working on knitting patterns in the car whenever possible) so we had all kinds of adventures! there’s so much to show, so i’m dividing it into 2 posts, and i’m going a little backwards, starting with last friday/saturday.

besides being taken out to amazing portland meal after meal, i’ve been eating fabulously at home the last few days, after we picked berries on sauvie island!  as i write this, i’m drinking tazo awake tea with local honey from the island, mmmmm.

it was a new experience for us all, walking through the farms and filling our baskets with fresh fruit.  we drove on to the island, and started looking for berry picking signs, with no specific farm in mind, so we started at a small-ish blueberry field.  (it actually seemed pretty huge, until we had our second farm to compare it to, pictured above)

the blueberries were easy!  they were mostly at good ripeness, and the ripe ones fall off easily when you wiggle them, so you pretty much shake the bundles with your basket underneath and the good ones fall right in!  between the 4 of us, we got a huge bag full (the total ended up filling 3 quart-size ziplock bags) for about $4!!  unbelievable!  and delicious!

then we wandered around the island some more and came across a raspberries sign…  it ended up being a huge farm with dozens of different things growing, the main ones on that day being raspberries, blueberries, and cherries.  there were also smaller patches of peas, lettuce, and some others that i can’t remember, and the not-ready-yet sections included tons of marionberries, and lots of herbs and other stuff i can’t remember…

the raspberries were at the very beginning of ready-ness (i’m pretty sure it was the first day for them, so we lucked out!) so they were trickier.  it was more of a hunt to find the ripe ones hidden behind tons of unripe ones.

but oh was it worth the work!!

and then, i saved the best for last… this wasn’t even on the sign at all, but the lady told us there might be a few hood strawberries left!  they were just at the end of their time, but we figured we’d go search around and maybe find 2 or 3 good ones.  it was definitely a search – so exciting to see a red spot inside all that green!

but we ended up finding a bunch of them!!  mostly small-ish ones – that photo below on the right shows our bucket; the top layer is all strawberries!  yummm!!  oh and, guess how much that huge thing of fresh raspberries and hood strawberries cost us… just guess… ok, ready?  $2.60!  for real!

last weekend i made a batch of vanilla/white chocolate chip cupcakes to try out my yard sale cupcake book, so after berry-picking i ate one with raspberries and blueberries – so good!!  then for a couple breakfasts in a row i had oatmeal with berries.  i’m going to have to make sauvie island a regular trip now, food just won’t be the same without it!

the day after sauvie island i didn’t take any photos, but i have to tell you a bit about it.  we went to the portland art museum to see the escher show – i didn’t think i was that into it, but i always love art museums, so i was up for checking it out.  wow, i was so wrong!  i am a total escher fan now!  especially as someone who does printmaking – it was so cool to see his actual lino blocks and wood blocks, and to see several process series.  like, the original concept drawing, then another drawing designing it more, then 2 separate block designs, each printed on its own, then the final print with the 2 (or 3) different blocks, and the blocks themselves.  so cool!  (not my personal favorite, but this is one where we got to see the actual 3 woodblocks.)

and then, weirdly enough, the patterny works were really inspiring as a knit designer.  i think it’s the same kind of thought process that turns organic shapes into a seamless pattern, and turns rows of knit stitches into a shape or pattern… am i crazy?  i need to go to art museums more, they can be so creatively inspirational in a unique way.  anyway, this is another print i really liked, and this was crazy awesome to see, taking up a whole wall.

lastly about those days with pete’s parents, roundup of pdx food highlights!  sweet potato pancakes at gravy (they taste like carrot cake!), falafel at ya hala, veggie lasagna at sub rosa, then on the days pete had to work but we still had a few meals out with them – hash brown scramble with veggie gravy at jam was best!

guess who had a birthday the other day!

our foofy kitten is now a whole year old! (that shot was taken the day before her bday.)

a couple days ago i realized that i missed my 1 year anniversary of being self-employed – kind of a big deal, pretty freaking awesome!  i honestly didn’t think i’d make it a year without getting some kind of part-time job or taking work i didn’t want, but i did it!  so, in traditional blog-related anniversary fashion, i made a massive (2-part) photo mosaic of images taken from my blog posts over the last year…

it was fun reading back over all i’ve done! that’s a smattering of worky things, designs, fun (craft-related) events/outings, etc…  so i’ve been doing a lot of reflecting the last couple days, and it’s funny that it seems my state of mind now isn’t too far away from where it was a year ago.  i’m so happy that i’ve made it here, but this whole freelancey self-employed career is just as scary now as it was then!  it’s also amazing and exciting and totally worth the stress and constant working and any other downsides!  but yeah, i’m still just doing a few solid things that i know will bring me a little rent money, and the rest is up in the air, just like it was a year ago.  the big difference is now i know i made it this first year, so i don’t see any reason why i can’t make it another!

moving on, diane is doing a craftypod giveaway for my ten 10 yard cuffs ebook!  to win, you just have to comment on the post with your thoughts on ebooks – there are some interesting comments so far.  i feel similarly to a lot of people – i love to hold a book in my hands and flip through the physical pages, but buying ebooks saves paper, ink, other resources, shipping, and money, so it’s a trade off.  as a self-publisher, pdfs are soooo much easier to sell than anything physical that i have to mail out (especially knitting pdfs thanks to ravelry!!), and they save me so much time and money that i can sell them so much cheaper and everyone benefits.

i do make a physical version of the cuffs book, but only for the kits – i give the option of getting a kit with a pdf instead, but i don’t give the option of getting a real book instead of an ebook alone.  this is mostly because of my own resources (time and money) but also because each book i make up uses paper (even if it is recycled paper) and ink and i try not to be wasteful.  but, it’s all very hard for me to make decisions like this (ebook vs real book) because of my love for real books, so i totally understand the people who say they don’t buy digital.  i think it’s this major adjustment we’re all going to have to slowly get used to because it just makes sense (economically, ecologically) for both self-publishers and buyers to go in the digital direction.  and as far as publishing companies go, well that’s a whole other subject, but i think more and more writers will go in the self-publishing direction, and therefore end up going digital.  generally speaking.  what do you think?

and then this topic leads to another of diane’s recent posts – how to kill your favorite website.  this is a fantastic post about the financial demise of craftstylish, as it followed many other craft publications in its inability to successfully monetize and keep up its awesomeness.  you should go read the post – it’s a tough subject and diane did a great job of concisely breaking it down.  basically, this world needs to evolve, because what used to work just doesn’t anymore.  as for what you, the reader, can do, i’ll copy diane’s conclusion here: “For now, when you watch TV, read websites, or flip through magazines, consider asking yourself these questions: ‘Who made this? Did I get value from it? And if so, how can I support the people who created that value?’”

and she inspired me to create yet another mosaic, this one featuring my favorite craftstylish projects from my 8 months of tutorials over there.  and i’ll quote her again because she said it best: “I think it’s good to point out: all this content was brought to you by them. There’s no way I could have created the time to make so many how-tos if they weren’t paying me for them.”  so true.

so now that i’m going in this new direction for my own career path – trying to be a bit more self-sufficient instead of relying on the continued success of outside sources (like i was doing with craftstylish), i do plan to devote some time once in awhile to quality tutorials here on do stuff! but, of course, this is part of my “job” and unfortunately it does all come down to money (hey i may live in a cheap apartment in portland, but rent and food still cost money).  i think it’s obvious that this blog’s purpose is, in part, to help crafters and potential shoppers become aware of my stuff and patterns for sale.  but i don’t plan on ever putting ads on my blog and i hope that i’m able to make ends meet doing what i’m doing, so that i can afford the time to put valuable content here for you to enjoy, cost free!  (one thing i did just add while working on my site redesign is the little share this page! button at the bottom of each post. sharing any of my posts that you like, via twitter, facebook, email, or a ton of other methods offered, is an easy and free way that you can help support me!)

which leads me to yet another craftypod topic, from the latest podcast which i just listened to - craft blogging: what should you write about? the part that spoke most strongly to me was about writing your passion.  when i first started brainstorming about making a zine, which then branched off and became this blog, i was so excited to think up the concept/title do stuff! because, as silly as it sounds, that it my passion!  doing stuff!  my whole life i’ve always hated the idea of boredom – i’d get angry at my brothers for saying they were bored – i’ve always had a million projects going on at once (even as a little kid), multi-tasking whenever possible.  so instead of just starting a craft zine/blog, i wanted to start a “stuff” zine/blog, so i’d have the freedom to write about any stuff that i like to do!  sure, i’m passionate about knitting and knit design, and crafting in general, but i’m also passionate about photography, and i also have bursts of passionate phases in printmaking, cooking/baking, sewing, web design, dyeing+spinning, art, music, beading, home decorating projects, and who knows what else in the future!

so, i created do stuff! and sometimes i lose sight of the point.  so i need to remember my passion: doing stuff!  i can’t let myself blog so often about things i’m selling (i try really hard to keep that down to a smallish percentage of my posts) and i need to remember to blog more often, in general, because there’s always some fun stuff going on in my life!  it may not be craft related, which is why i might not think to blog it, but if it’s doing stuff related and i’m into it, then hey, it’s blog material!  so i’ve come up with a few different blog topics that i hope to make regular quicky posts – things that i can get up here without so much time and writing required, so that i’ll be posting more often, and with more variety.  i’ll leave the topics a secret for now, but you’ll start seeing them soon!

oh hello there world. i’ve been so out of everything lately, it’s been a weird last couple of weeks.  pete had a semi-emergency surgery a week ago and has been home recovering since, so i’ve been working less than usual, and things like blog-reading and twitter-following almost not at all, so i’m pretty detached.  we’ve been watching lots of tv shows (the wire, party down, x-files for nerd nostalgia…) and movies and i’ve been knitting away on cuffs and brainstorming/planning some future projects.  so, speaking of cuffs, you may remember that several weeks ago i said i’d hopefully have them done in a week-ish… well yeah, that was crazy of me to think that could happen, first of all, and then i got slowed down by other things, but now i’m finally on my way to hopefully releasing the whole thing by this weekend, for real.

one thing that distracted me a bit was finding out that craftstylish has decided to go in another direction (or something) starting at the end of the month and none of us bloggers will be doing tutorials anymore.  which means a couple of things for you, dear do stuff! readers… i’ll have more time to work on my blog/website, now that all those hours per week are freed up, and if i have any fun tutorial ideas now i can post them here instead of there, so hopefully do stuff! content will be more frequent and more exciting!!  (for me, it means a less fun thing – scrambling to figure out ways to scrape rent money together, which has led to some quality brainstorming time and i’m sure will all be for the best in the long run because now i have some plans i’m super excited about!)

so, my last 3 craftstylish tutorials… out of order because this one - fabric cd cases - is my favorite!  i’d originally planned for this project to be for mother’s day, which is what mine was made for, and then show my wedding case as another example, until i realized at the last minute that it would be posted after mother’s day! so i wrote it up focusing on the wedding angle (so lucky i had that wedding case to show!) and just mentioned that it could be for other purposes, even though that’s so silly because of course it could be used for anything/anyone – any gift occasion or for yourself, as well as for music or video cds/dvds instead of photo discs. duh. but, you know, it’s wedding month, so i had to steer it in that direction.

for my mom’s gift, i filled that case with music cds because she has a new-ish job which has her driving up to several hours a day all over southern california, and no ipod hook-up in her car.  oh and also, my mom has great taste in music, so i knew i could give her a bunch of my favorite cds and she’d love them!

the case is completely hand-sewn, with a hand-knit i-cord tie.  i really (surprisingly) enjoyed hand-sewing this project – now i want to do more sewing by hand!  i get so frustrated with my cheap sewing machine so often, i love that hand-sewing puts myself in control, like with knitting!

last night, my last tutorial post went up: monogrammed napkins with recycled sheets. i love working with thrifted sheets, all the great patterns and colors! i had a hard time thinking of wedding projects, so this is a simple one, but i love how they look!

before those 2, i started off celebration month with greeting cards made from recycled materials.

basic concept, but i was happy to show how easy it is to print on grocery bag paper, something i love to do, and also to make custom envelopes with recycled paper.

i had fun decorating my different card examples (one for mother’s day, one for graduation, and one thank you) and i took way too many photos and had to cut it down tons for the post. so these are some that i couldn’t fit in…

so that’s it for now.  hey, if you’re free tomorrow evening and live in portland, my wool jewelry class still has ten spots as of right now, at the albina library (ne pdx).  it’s free, i provide the supplies, all you need to do is register, should be fun! oh oh i just thought of one other thing i can show you!  check out the hat i knit for pearl for her 1st birthday!  recycled cotton, so soft!

i have non-crafty things totally in the spirit of doing stuff! that i want to talk about, which don’t have pictures, so i’m going to stick a few old black and white film photos in here because of my excitement about my recent discovery that you can develop film with coffee!! can you believe it?! my mind was so seriously blown when i came across that photojojo post!  so these were developed the old fashioned chemical way (by me in my bathroom), but i hope to be showing you coffee-developed photos sometime soon! (you can see other people’s coffee photos here.)

have i mentioned before that pete is starting a non-profit?  it’s still in the way beginning planning stages, but we’ve brainstormed about it quite a bit, and i’ve just gotten the simple place-holder webpage up!  it’s called 2 cent solar, and you can read a bit about it at 2centsolar.org.  (not taking donations yet because it’s not started yet, but i’ll definitely keep you updated!)  the basic logo is also a place holder – we’ll probably be putting a call out to graphic designers to donate their skillz and make a logo, so let us know if you might be interested…

ok this is something i should have done years ago, but i tried once and couldn’t figure it out, gave up for awhile, transferred my domain names away from yahoo to a more easily manageable place, finally got around to trying again and finally figured it out! oh yeah, “what’s it?” you ask…  well leethal.net is now leethal.net, it no longer takes you to leethal.coloredlights.net.  which means this blog is now leethal.net/zine instead of the old leethal.coloredlights.net/zine (so long!) etc.  all old links with the coloredlights in the middle will still work, so you shouldn’t need to change your rss feed or bookmarks or anything, but i’m really happy that new links won’t have to be so long and annoying anymore!

so i wanted to ask you all a favor, since i’m not so savvy with this domain server kind of stuff (clearly)… could you let me know if you happen to come across any issues, broken links, etc, in any of my sites?  i fixed all of ours (mine and pete’s) so nothing transfers to coloredlights anymore like they all used to.  the other thing is that i think they should all work either with or without the www but maybe that might be a problem on some browsers or computers, so if you can’t get to any sites without the w’s, let me know and i’ll make sure to always use w’s when linking.  here are all of them, just for fun…

leethal.net, leemeredith.com, badmoviebingo.net (and badmoviebingogame.com), metalheadpete.com, the newest 2centsolar.org (and 2centsolar.com, twocentsolar.org, twocentsolar.com), and coloredlights.net, my original website i started in college.  we have a lot of websites!

another thing i’ll just mention here because i’ve been thinking about it a lot lately and maybe some readers out there have advice or anything else to share…  i’m starting to plan a self-published book!  i got myself indie publishing at powell’s the other day (image from concretehermit), i’ve started to shop around local printers a little (if you know of a portland printer that does full-color books, i’d love recommendations!!) and i’m pretty excited about the whole thing!  i do want to get issue #2 of do stuff! finished and released before putting too much effort into the book though…

and speaking of books… one big thing i’m planning to start here on do stuff! is book reviews!  i have an ever growing list of books in my current collection that need to be raved about (and even some with giveaways!!) so i want to start doing reviews regularly, like one every 2 weeks ish, starting possibly today or tomorrow.  so, if any rad books happen to magically end up in my mailbox, i’d definitely do something bloggy with them, hint hint if any authors/publishers happen to be reading hehe…  so many awesome craft books have been coming out lately, i can hardly keep up with them all!!